Cycles
The days that followed blurred together, a looping reel of monotony. I woke up, put on the mask, and played my part. The sun rose, the grounds of the school hummed, and people passed by with their easy smiles, just like they always did. Every day felt like the one before it, a cruel joke from the universe that I was too tired to laugh at.
In class, the teacher’s voice became a dull hum, the lectures sliding past me like water. At lunch, I sat in my usual corner, the food in my tray pushed around by my fork as I watched the room move in synchronized chaos. People laughed, talked, and gestured with an energy I couldn’t summon. It was like watching a play, except I wasn’t part of the cast. Just an reader, trapped behind the fourth wall.
The world was a machine, and I was just a cog, spinning endlessly but going nowhere.
Even at home, the cycle persisted. My foster parents asked the same questions, their voices distant: How was school? Did you eat? I answered on autopilot, my responses perfectly crafted to keep them from asking more. Upstairs in my room, I stared at the ceiling until the patterns in the plaster blurred into meaningless shapes.
Sometimes, I wondered if anyone else felt like this. If they, too, saw the world as a series of repetitions—an endless cycle of rising, falling, and pretending, like a story repeating for entertainment. Or was it just me? Was I broken in some way that I couldn’t fix?
I tried to distract myself, scrolling aimlessly through my phone, but even that became part of the cycle. The same photos, the same faces, the same hollow captions. Everyone looked so happy, so vibrant, as if the weight of existence hadn’t crushed them like it had me. I hated it, but I couldn’t look away. I wanted to be like them, to catch even a glimpse of what they have.
And then there were the dreams.
At night, my mind played its cruelest trick yet. In my dreams, the world wasn’t a cycle—it was alive. Vibrant. I’d see colors so bright they made my chest ache, hear laughter that felt like sunshine warming my skin. Sometimes, I’d dream of her—my friend, my Mayflower, the one I lost. In my dreams, she hadn’t drifted away. She’d sit beside me, her presence a comfort I missed so much. I'd do anything to get the comfort back.
But then I’d wake up, and reality would drag me back into its gray, endless loop.
One morning, as I stood in front of the mirror, painting on my mask like I always did, something inside me snapped. My reflection stared back at me, the same tired, nonchalant expression I’d perfected over years. But this time, I felt a flicker of something different. Frustration.
“I can’t do this forever,” I whispered to the mirror, my voice shaking. The mask felt heavier than ever, like it might crack under its own weight. “I won’t do this forever.”
But even as I said it, I didn’t know what else to do. The cycle was all I knew, and breaking free felt impossible, like trying to escape a maze with no exits.
That night, as I sat on my bed staring at the cracks in the ceiling, I made a decision. I didn’t know what breaking the cycle would look like, or if I even had the strength to try. But I knew one thing for certain: I couldn’t stay invisible forever.
Even if it scared me, even if it hurt, I had to find a way to exist beyond the mask. To be seen. To be real.
Tomorrow, I would try.